Everybody knows the dice
are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.Everybody knows the
scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will discloseWhat
everybody knows.


Leonard Cohen

We
Don't Need No Education: Time to give up?Barbwire
by Barbano / Expanded from the
1-30-2014 Sparks Tribune

The
program premiers were available to every television set in the region
because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate
entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which
generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online
at ReSurge.TV.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service
and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno
NV 89510.

Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing
efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate
community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media
model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on
the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass
the message upward.

I'm proud that only the Sparks Tribune had the guts to print the truth.

As usual, kids pay the penalties for perverted pedagogic professionals.

Former Sparks-Reno-Washoe school boss Heath Morrison has a cushy new
job in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He was named U.S. superintendent
of the year and brought national honors to the local hierarchy.

Like the fast-talking music man he
is, traveling salesman Morrison knew when to get outta Dodge.

I proved that his astounding graduation rate rise was not only phony but could
not be sustained.

He raced to the land of NASCAR and
Jesse Helms just in time to take credit for another unprecedented increasecaused
in part because his initial senior class would be the first under weaker requirements
passed by the NC legislature years before.

The medium that shapes public
opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted
green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only
priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment
and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the
wave of a balance sheet.

1. "'About
60 percent is about data and better record keeping, but that means
40 percent of the rate is truly about kids,' (Nevada Superintendent
of Public Instruction Dale) Erquiaga said.

"It's
better record keeping that the Washoe County School District did
a few years ago when it saw big jumps in rates, School Superintendent
Pedro Martinez said. Washoe County's
jump from a 56 percent graduation rate in 2009 to 70 percent in
2011 was due in part to better accounting. Martinez
said the baseline from which Washoe should be measured started in
2012, when the district was at a 69 percent grad rate.... [Emphasis
added.]

"Martinez
said he credits Clark County Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky
for being upfront about some of the
gains were because of data cleanup. [Emphasis added.]

"He
said it's something that Washoe didn't do as well, which confused
the community." [Editor's note:
That would include everybody but Sparks Tribune Barbwire
readers.]

NevadaDayRequiredReadingThe
Lady in the Red DressThe Barbwire's classic Nevada Day
column written in 1983The compleat history of the Silver State in
500 wordsSO
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?Sparks
Tribune 10-31-2013 and previously